


A Wrong Door at the Right Time

by storyandshark



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/M, just some self-indulgent bullshit tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 17:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16791718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyandshark/pseuds/storyandshark
Summary: Sasha thought that she was done with Michael after their first encounter. She was wrong.





	A Wrong Door at the Right Time

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Sasha James returns to her flat and finds a door that isn't right. She isn't as fazed by this as she should be, but then again, she has a couple of notable supernatural encounters under her belt and knowledge of a lot more. What comes as more of a challenge than accepting that the door is there is figuring out what to do with it. She wants to open it, to see what's behind it, but that also seems like an incredibly stupid thing to do. It doesn't seem like anything bad, just a door, really, and considering the only supernatural entity that she knows for sure exists and is definitely malicious is a woman basically made of worms, a door can't be too bad. And it's not like she can just ignore it either, since it's there in her apartment. Might as well get it over with, she supposes.

But as she steps forward and puts her hand on the knob, a voice, discordant and drawling and disorienting, says, “Oh, I wouldn't do that _yet_.”

Sasha whirls around to see the tall blond normal-looking-but-not-really-normal form of Michael — had he really been there the whole time? — standing on the other side of the room, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. “You,” she says, because she can't think of any other thing that would make sense.

He laughs, a sound that's spiraling and spinning and sends a chill up Sasha's spine. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“What are you doing here?” she asks, because there isn't really anything else to ask.

“I'm visiting,” he says, as though it's normal for terrifying knife-hand monsters to decide to just show up for a chat. That said, it isn't normal for terrifying knife-hand monsters to buy flowers or order coffee either, and he's done that, so a friendly visit isn't too far off.

Sasha steps away from the door, although she isn't sure where exactly she wants to move to, so she just steps into the middle of the room. “You change your mind and decide to kill me now? Or do you have some other advice for me?”

He tilts his head slightly to the left, smiling widely. “No, I'm visiting.”

“O...kay. What's with the door?”

“Don't you have to use doors to go places?”

For a moment, she isn't sure exactly how to respond, since being snarky to a thing with knife fingers that randomly appeared in her flat may not be the best idea. “I- yes?” It comes out sort of as a question, but it's the best she's got.

He laughs again, the sound grating and pleasant and fascinating all at the same time. “I wouldn't mention this to your Archivist,” he says. “I don't think it's enough for one of his statements, anyway.”

And just like that, he walks forward, opens his door, and leaves. As it closes behind him, it vanishes, leaving no indication it was there in the first place, leaving Sasha wondering if it had really been there at all.

... 

  
Michael doesn't really know why he visits Sasha. He returns a few more times, and she relaxes more with each, eventually going to far as to offer him a cup of tea when he opens his door to her flat. Ordinarily, he only visits to take people, or to drive their small and petty minds to what they call madness, or both at the same time. On the rare occasion, the very rare occasion, he visits with no intention to kill or maim or madden, it's to further his own goals. And visits to Sasha are certainly not to that purpose, except they also are. They're not the Distortion's goals, and not Michael's, since they are one and the same, but they also are Michael's and therefore the Distortion's goals since they are not one and the same. It's difficult even for him to understand, and he's the embodiment of confusion and madness. While these visits don't really help him, they don't hurt him either, and as long as something isn't hurting him then there's no harm to it. He doesn't mind it, the Distortion doesn't mind it, and so he continues his visits.

...

  
Sasha almost stops noticing Michael showing up. Sometimes he comes before she gets back and is there waiting, sometimes he shows up on the rare occasions she's actually in her flat and not out for work, and she's rather sure that he sometimes shows up when she's not there at all, since some of her things have been getting moved around to places she knows she didn't move them. She did reluctantly decide not to mention these little visits to Jon, since he has enough to deal with what with Martin in the archives and his tireless research about Prentiss. If Michael isn't giving advice or doing anything particularly dangerous, hell, anything particularly interesting at all, there's no reason to worry him by bringing it up. Also, she doesn't want to go in and make a statement about it, especially since there isn't much good material to make a statement with. Michael wasn't lying when he said he was just visiting. That's all it seems like it is. So Sasha learns to treat it just like every other part of her life. If Michael does change his mind and decide to kill her, oh well. Nothing she can really do about it.

One day, when Sasha is sitting in her kitchen drinking tea and Michael opens his door, she decides to ask him some questions. She would get a tape recorder out and record it like a proper employee of the Magnus Institute, but she doesn't have one, so she settles for remembering them and writing them down on paper later. “So... what are you, exactly? And don't say some poetic garbage about how you can't be described with words.”

She expects him to laugh again, like he had the first time, or launch into some diatribe about how indescribable he is, but instead he gives her a weird look. “I don't think you'd understand.”

He sounds sincere, not condescending or anything like that, but she presses on. “Try me.”

He shakes his head. “I'm... Michael.”

She braces her hands on the table, pushing herself back with a long exhale. “Okay. If this is how it's going to go, then I'm done.”

“I'm Michael,” he says again, insistently. “I am... the Spiral, the Distortion. There are many names for me. I am impossibility and madness, mystery and lies.”

“Hm,” she says noncommittally. “That's... helpful.”

“I am, by my nature, impossible to describe in terms that you would understand.”

“Moving on,” she says. “Why did you help us?”

“Because you and your Archivist can help me in return, and because that's what friends do.” He smiles again, and for the first time asks her a real question. “Do you think we're friends?”

“I... um, I'm not really sure. You're... kind of a monster, no offense or anything. And I'm not sure what your motives are in all of this.”

“I want to help,” he says.

“You said thirty seconds ago that you were the manifestation of lies,” she says.

“What reason would I have to lie? If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it already.”

The answer turns Sasha's blood cold, realizing that he could kill her just like that, but also brings a sense of comfort because he seems to be telling the truth. “Right.” She goes through her mental list of questions, a bit thrown off by his responses. “Do you have anything else that will help against Prentiss?”

He does laugh this time, although it isn't as long or drawn out as usual, just a small chuckle. “Nothing that your people could actually use. I think I've helped enough with the Flesh Hive.”

Sasha rubs her scarred shoulder, the memory of fingers under her skin and the worm wriggling between them all too fresh in her mind. “Thanks for that, I guess. What's that you keep calling her? The Flesh Hive?”

“That is its name,” he says, and the answer is frustrating but so distinctly _Michael_ that it's hard for Sasha to really get angry.

Sasha just sighs. “Of course. Well, if you're really called the Spiral, I suppose it makes sense you'd talk in circles.”

He laughs, and it occurs to her then that he's laughing at her joke, which is an incredibly weird concept to wrap her mind around. “Yes, I suppose that's true.”

She asks a few more questions, and all the answers are close to the same, all riddles and confusion and no real information she can use. Maybe she could try to casually mention something about spirals to Jon, see if he'd look into it. She could tell him straight out about Michael's visits, but she doesn't really want to. It would almost feel like a betrayal at this point. And it would really stress Jon out if she mentioned that she's been seeing Michael for a couple weeks by now. Best to just not bring it up.

He does give an almost straight answer to her last question. “Why do you keep visiting me?”

“Isn't that what friends do?” He doesn't allow for any followup, because that's the moment he decides to walk out his door and take it with him, leaving Sasha alone to puzzle it all through. 

... 

  
Michael still doesn't understand why he visits Sasha. He doesn't understand why he's said the things to her that he has. He reasons that he's biding his time, waiting for the right moment to kill her. Unpredictability is his nature, after all. He's only lying to her until he decides to kill her. That is what he does. It's an easy lie to fall for, either for her or for himself.

...

  
Prentiss does attack the Archives. It's not like they didn't predict it, didn't prepare for it, but it's terrifying and chaotic and overwhelming just the same. Sasha hopes that Tim made it out, that the plan to use the fire suppression system actually works. That if Jon and Martin don't make it out their deaths are quick and not filled with worms. She hopes she can find the manual override, or that Elias can, and that they don't get eaten on the way. As she rushes along and goes to open the next door in her path, the sudden sound of a familiar, jarring voice stops her in her tracks.

“I wouldn't open that one,” Michael says, and Sasha turns and sees him standing behind her.

“I don't have time for this right now,” she says, and yanks the door open anyway.

Artifact Storage. Of course it's Artifact Storage. She has to take a steeling breath, clutches the torch harder and feels the weight of the tape recorder in her pocket. She starts forward, goes to step into that awful room, but before she can, she feels a weight on her shoulder. Not a hand, it isn't right to be a hand, and she knows immediately who (Or what? Or who?) owns it. She spins around again, swatting the not-quite-hand away, not caring about the fact that Michael could kill her just as easily as the worms could.

“I don't have time for this right now!” she shouts, voice reverberating off the walls, bouncing back and forth in a way that doesn't sound quite right.

“If you go into that room, They're going to kill you.” Michael's voice is all seriousness and sincerity.

A thousand questions buzz in Sasha's mind, but she doesn't ask them. “If I don't get to the manual override, then all of my friends are going to die. Isn't that why you showed me about the CO2 in the first place?”

She moves to go into the room again, planning to ignore Michael if he tries to stop her, but the sound of a door creaking open stops her. She doesn't turn back at first, planning to ignore it, but curiosity gets the better of her and she turns and sees a door that wasn't there before and Michael pulling it open. She can't see what's behind it, even with the light of her torch, but she can see Michael in front of it, looking almost urgent, if that's even possible.

“You're no use to them dead,” he says, voice its normal croon except for a slightly different tone underneath it.

She scoffs. “Yeah, so you can kill me with your weird door or your knife hands? Thanks, but no thanks. You said you were a liar yourself.”

“You're far too mistrusting of me, Sasha. I've never lied to you,” he says.

She thinks he's right. She wouldn't really know if he was lying or not, but he hasn't tried to kill her yet, for what it's worth. He's been almost helpful in his own weird way. And as she shines her torch into Artifact Storage once again and the chill slides down her back, she really does consider that he could be telling the truth. There's never been anything good about Artifact Storage, and if there are more monsters out there, that's where they'd be. If she or Elias doesn't get to the manual override... But if she gets killed before she gets there... She isn't even sure if this is the way to the manual override.

“Fuck it,” she says, and shoulders past Michael and through that door.

When she steps through the door she enters a corridor full of mirrors, and her heart sinks as she realizes that she fell for a very obvious trap. There's no sign of Michael or anything else waiting to kill her, so she cautiously walks forward, keeping her torch up to weakly illuminate just a bit more of the hallway. She walks for a minute and then, unexpectedly, she comes to the end of it, another door in front of her. She clutches the knob, turns it, opens the door, goes through it.

In front of her is the manual override for the fire suppression system.

“You wanted to save them,” Michael says behind her.

“Thanks,” she says numbly, turning on the fire suppression system and hopefully not killing Jon and Martin, or at the very least, giving them a quick death.

“That's what friends are for, isn't it?” Michael says, laughing in a way that to Sasha is no longer unpleasant, then closes the door and vanishes.

...

  
Michael doesn't understand why. He's stopped trying to understand. 

...

Weeks later, things have almost turned back to normal for Sasha, at least as much as they can be considered normal for working in an institute that catalogues supernatural events. Prentiss is dead. The Archives are still a bit of a mess, but Jon and Tim and Martin are all alive and relatively well, aside from Jon and Tim's worm injuries and Martin's discovering Gertrude's body. Other than Elias, Sasha is the only one who made it out virtually unscathed physically and psychologically. She has a feeling, though, that if she had entered Artifact Storage, things would have turned out much worse. Even if it hadn't, Michael had at least helped her save her friends, which was more than enough for her.

She hasn't seen Michael since their encounter in the Archives. He hasn't stopped to visit again. She feels sad over that, which is a weird feeling that she's not sure if she likes or not. Strange as it sounds, she does think that she likes Michael, or at least trusts him. It's almost lonely in her flat without his usual visits.

One day, though, she returns to her flat and thinks she hears a noise as she turns the key in her door. The creak of old hinges. When she gets into the flat, there's nothing there, and she's disappointed. At least until she sees something sitting on her coffee table.

A bunch of flowers. Lilacs. No note or anything, but she knows who they're from.

Sasha smiles.


End file.
